Measuring the benefits of open standards standards: Beyond the motion Gerkens and the Dutch Court of Audit report1

Measuring the benefits of open standards standards: Beyond the motion Gerkens and the Dutch Court of Audit report1

Egyedi, T.M.
Enserink, B.

Technology, Policy and Management

Infrastructures, Systems and Services

2013-12-31

In 2010 the Dutch Parliament (motion Gerkens) requested the Court of Audit to measure the benefits of using open standards and open source software for government IT. In its report of 2011 the Dutch Court of Audit concluded that there were hardly any benefits to be gained. The Court's underlying research was widely and harshly criticized, especially with regard to open source software. In this article we focus on the open standards part of the Court's research, a subject which was barely addressed. We analyze the report's omissions and weaknesses . An inventory of existing international methodologies shows that these do not fully cover the required ground. As a stepping stone towards a more systematic way of measuring the benefits of open standards, we therefore introduce an economic framework on standardization (functions and effects). To illustrate its use, we examine one effect of open standards more closely, i.e. reduced switching costs.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:391a61e9-cdf4-476d-9e97-070b733450ff

European Academy for Standardization

EURAS 2013 conference, Brussels (Belgium) 24-26 June 2013

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 Egyedi, T.M., Enserink, B.